ode to an airport

i have found my favourite place in Singapore. Changi Airport. i don't think there are too many people in other countries who would name an airport as their favourite place. But then they don't live in Singapore, and their airport has not just picked up its 500th (!!!) Best Airport award in 35 years. That's pretty amazing, even by our over-achieving Singaporean standards.
.
There's something about Changi that arouses the same sense of fondness and fierce protectiveness in me that our trees do. It's partly the classiness of its architecture, i guess. And also its meaning -- its status as a gateway, a place of transit. But there's more to it than that. i think it's got something to do with the fact that Changi is Singapore's most visible, most easily-recognisable, most customer-friendly miracle baby. 'Most' -- because we have lots of miracle babies. Heck, the entire country is a miracle baby. But Changi is the mother of all miracle babies. It's the most well-loved of all of our emblems of success. Singaporeans in my generation grew up with Changi -- it's the architectural equivalent of a younger sibling you've watched growing into adulthood. Which probably explains why looking at the current construction work there, the way the old car-park at Terminal One has had to make way for a new mega-mall, makes my heart just choke up in a way that's just ... well, just not what one would expect to feel about an airport.
.
The airport is more than an airport. It's a community, a home -- to the staff who work there (baggage handlers, trolley uncles and aunties, air traffic controllers, counter staff, etc etc), to the Singaporeans who go there for their weekend shopping. i remember going to there to work on school projects back in secondary school -- it used to be the hangout place of choice among my schoolmates, and lots of students would go there because its vast open spaces and hushed silence provided the perfect place for exam revision. We'd sit on the floor of the viewing gallery, in front of those huge floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall glass windows, gawking at the planes taking off and landing while working through ten-year-series questions. It was all kinda awesome.
.
And you know what? The good thing about Changi is that, unlike other places with sentimental value in Singapore, nobody actually believes that it will ever be taken away from us. It's not going to get knocked down to make way for some newer, more money-spinning thing -- because the whole point of Changi is that it spins money. In fact, it promises to keep on expanding and spinning even more money -- by 2025 it will have an unbelievable five terminals. That place is going to take up half the country! How mindboggling is that! (OK. i exaggerate. But still. Five terminals on an island this size is ... )
.
It seems kinda crazy to be praying for one's national airport. But you know what? Why not. i hope Changi will be well and safe and enduring, for a long long long long time to come.
.
.